Ivy Bridge and Haswell natively supports only *two* and *six* USB 3.0 ports, respectively. FM2 has four, I don't know about FM2+. The rest, if any, currently are third party controllers (which, I might add, used to be just short of completely abysmal until very recently). And IB-E and AMD FX, both top platforms, don't have any native support at all.

Manufacturers either have to design their own IP cores or license off the shelf IP cores for USB 3.0 (and everything else for that matter). This isn't some magically free thing in terms of development or monetary costs. It is also significant R&D work. It requires boards to meet new specifications which means new designs instead of dropping in tried and true existing designs. Then even after all of the fabrication work is done, it requires continuous driver work and support. As with any new technology you are guaranteed that the first iteration of HW support will be pretty lackluster and that there will be shotty driver support to go with it. It typically takes a few iterations before they really get the hw & sw support working well for things.

Consider boards with a combination of usb 2.0 and 3.0 ports for instance. In such a case there are very good reasons to keep both: (1) backwards compatibility in the case of shotty driver support or faulty hardware support -- you never abandon the known working components until you are sure you have worked out ALL Of the issues with the new components -- this is just smart business practice -- as you don't want your customers boycotting you when suddenly your board don't work with x,y,z device because you messed something up, (2) It is easier to meet specs in your board design if you only put a few 3.0 ports on there and keep the rest as 2.0. Engineers for instance might just extend an existing board design with a few usb 3.0 ports because it is much simpler than a complete redesign and they can get it out the door faster.

Finally it can even come down to an issue of licensing costs. It is going to cost much less to use existing USB 2.0 IP cores in your products than USB 3.0 IP cores everywhere. It makes little practical sense to pay to use the IP cores in everything if the market isn't demanding that and if consumers don't care about it. Instead you pay to use the cores in the segments of the market that demand them and no where else.

Ivy Bridge and Haswell natively supports only *two* and *six* USB 3.0 ports, respectively. FM2 has four, I don't know about FM2+. The rest, if any, currently are third party controllers (which, I might add, used to be just short of completely abysmal until very recently). And IB-E and AMD FX, both top platforms, don't have any native support at all.

Even Intel had resorted to throwing third party IP cores on their boards because of that. And boy are they wishy-washy. The drivers use to bluescreen my PC on various occasions. No-way I'd plug USB 2.0 devices into them given that -- might as well us the 2.0 ports and controller instead and get some reliability.

My motherboard came with 2 USB 2.0 (rear IO) as well as a vertical port on the motherboard (I put a bluetooth dongle), and 2 headers for 4 more USB 2.0 ports. Aside from all that, there are a plethora of USB 3.0 ports: 4 (rear IO), 4 more via 2 headers. That's 15 USB ports, way more than I need. All the devices I have (always) plugged in don't take advantage of USB 3 anyways: webcam, Xbox controller, keyboard, mouse. Had they not included the USB 2.0 ports, I would only have 8 USB ports, so it makes it more feature rich + cost

Why exactly? Both have sufficiently high theoretical maximums that no mechanical drive is going to reach those speeds and USB 3.0 has backwards compatibility with USB 2.0 ports which are ubiquitous. I'm not really sure there is any advantage to esata*. I imagine esata is going to die the same death as firewire (and thunderbolt probably will also). Not being ubiquitous relegates you to niche markets at the end of the day -- you never really die but you live in twilight.